


Not Really Sorry

by orphan_account



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: AU, Gen, Kid!Lock, Young Mycroft, babysitter john
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-25
Updated: 2014-10-25
Packaged: 2018-02-22 13:33:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2509577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mummy and Daddy Holmes need a break from their children, so hire a babysitter to take care of the insufferable pair for a couple of days. Sherlock and Mycroft almost immediately have a falling out which has the potential to be the beginning of a hatred which could last the rest of their lives. It's up to John, the man charged with keeping them out of trouble, to try mend what has been broken between the two brothers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Really Sorry

**Author's Note:**

> This was the first Sherlock fic I wrote and was originally meant as a one-shot, but going through my dA gallery and transferring my Sherlock fics over here, I re-read it and saw it could turn into a multi-chaptered story with a plot rather than whatever this is. Part two coming soon. Enjoy. <3

“Who’s he? How come he’s here?” an eleven-year-old boy asked petulantly from the lounge room.

As the trio entered in full, the mother smiled a chastising smile at the rather pudgy boy and reprimanded, “Be polite, Mycroft! This is a very old friend of your father’s and mine.”

“And use proper English, too!” they heard another small voice call from behind the maroon leather sofa. “What you  _should_ have said is, ‘ _Why_ is he here?’ not, ‘ _How come.’_ You sound like a moron.”

The eleven- year-old scowled and grabbed the large book from his lap, not turning as he reached over the back of the seat, supposedly to drop it on the other. “Stop trying to be clever, Sherlock! We all know you’re not!”

“Clever enough to fool you, you great oaf!” he taunted from his newly acquired seat on the opposing couch. “Did you really think I’d be stupid enough to stay there?”

“I knew  _I_ wouldn’t be and I suppose I knew to some extent that even  _you_ couldn’t be  _that_ silly, but I decided to indulge you. After all, if I win every time, you might decide you don’t enjoy being beaten quite as much as you let on. You really are quite the masochist, aren’t you?”

“Mycroft!” their father cried, appalled. “I’ve not the slightest clue as to why you think it acceptable to insult your brother that way, or how you even know what that word means-”

“He read it in one of mummy’s books,” the skinny boy on the couch supplied with a smirk.

The two parents glanced at each other, red-faced and the father tried to continue as he had. “It is unacceptable for you to act this way towards Sherlock and once I’ve explained to you who this man is, you will go to time out and stay there until I say you can leave. Do you understand?”

“Yes, father,” Mycroft muttered demurely, kicking his heels against the couch dejectedly.

“No desert tonight, either,” he stated with finality.

Mycroft sighed and slumped as Sherlock snickered quietly across the room. The stranger had been watching the exchange and the siblings had been watching him, gauging his reactions to their antics carefully. They would discuss him in detail later. Or rather, Sherlock would strut before Mycroft and explain his deductions while Mycroft seethed in silence, disallowed from making conversation with his younger brother as he sat in time out.

“Now. This man is your new-”

“Lawyer?” Sherlock took a wild guess, looking at the man’s black suit and boring tie.

“Solicitor,” Mycroft clarified, glancing at the small ink stains on his hands.

“No… Thinking now. We wouldn't need a solicitor. Nurse? Doctor,” Sherlock followed his gaze to the man’s hands, seeing traces of powder from gloves.

“Mmh, chef,” Mycroft stated a more likely possibility.

“It’s not flour, idiot. Teacher. Primary. Private school.”

“Why would he need gloves?”

“OCD? Health risks? Food? Cleaning?”

“Cleaner?”

“Cleaner with children, if at all.”

“Why is that?” Mycroft asked sceptically.

“Crow’s feet,” Sherlock replied, pointing at the man’s eyes.

“So?”

“So he spends a lot of time around young children, whether his own or others’, uses disposable gloves often, writes a lot, smiles a lot, wears expensive suits and has something to do with us.”

“Babysitter,” they both said with identical scowls of disgust and defensive crossing of arms over chests.

There was silence as the two children glared at the man who was to be looking after them and he looked back impassively. It was broken by Sherlock glancing at Mycroft from the corner of his eye and smirking. “I won.”

“No you didn’t,” Mycroft snapped back, not looking at his brother. “We tied. We both said it at the same time.”

“But I made the deductions which allowed us to figure it out.”

“You just made them out loud. I was thinking them in my head at the same time. Just because I don’t feel the need to show off, it doesn’t mean you won.”

“But you  _do,_ you show off all the time. So you  _weren’t_ thinking the same thing, so you were leeching off my thoughts, so I won!”

“You didn’t win, Sherlock! It was a tie!”

“Was not!”

“Was too, you filthy liar!”

“I’m not a liar, you are!”

“Boys, stop it! Both of you to time out,  _now!”_ their father interrupted.

“I’m not going anywhere with him!” they shouted, pointing at each other.

His expression turned stormy and they shrank away from him. “Go,” was all he said, deathly quiet.

“Yes, father,” they muttered and spun on their heels, racing out of the room and away from their father’s wrath.

Sherlock reached the door first and wrenched it open, Mycroft falling behind but equally eager to escape.

 

Sherlock sat in the rocking chair like it was a throne, studiously ignoring Mycroft, who was sitting angrily at his feet.

“I hate you,” the older boy muttered.

Sherlock slumped a little and quickly ran through his mind anything he could do to make his brother retract that comment. Within moments it became apparent he didn’t know how, so he just murmured, “I’m sorry, Mycroft,” as a last resort.

“No you’re not,” he sneered quietly.

Sherlock didn’t know what to say. He  _was_ sorry he’d gotten Mycroft into more trouble, but he couldn’t say it in a way which would enable his brother to believe him. ‘The English language can be so insufficient sometimes,’ he thought sadly, looking down at the back of his brother’s head.

 

When their new babysitter came to get them for dinner, Mycroft went with him sullenly, but Sherlock silently left and went to the bedroom he shared with his brother. He pulled out his small violin and tuned it quietly, then tightened and rosined the bow, sadly admiring the opal-inlayed handle and pale horse tail. Using a soft cloth, he wiped rosin powder from beneath the elegantly carved bridge of the violin and placed the instrument under his chin.

He stood and walked slowly to the window which overlooked the driveway, wet from the recent rains and played a slow G scale. Once finished, he looked at the music stand beside him and flipped to a new page.  _Requiem for a Dream,_ he translated the Latin title of the piece. It was about time he taught himself something new, anyways.

Quickly reading through the first page of music, he placed the bow gently on the strings and began. The slow pace calmed his disorderly thoughts and allowed him to split his concentration between the music and the examination of his reaction to Mycroft’s words. He’s been angry, irritated Mycroft hadn’t accepted his apology, but there was something else, something… sad.  _Hurt._ Mycroft had  _hurt_ him, by not believing he truly was sorry. It wasn’t the fact of his reaction which scared him; it was the strength of it.

Mycroft insulted him on an hourly basis, from his clothes to his figure to his intelligence. This happened so often Sherlock had become desensitised to what his brother was even saying, ignoring both the words and the harmful intent behind them. So why was this any different?

‘Because you gave me something,’ he imagined Mycroft sneering. ‘You’re usually so impartial, so…  _dull._ But not this time. You tried to give me something, Sherlock, and I scorned it. You tried to give me your care, your  _love-’_

“I haven’t heard that one before,” Mycroft said from the door.

Sherlock stiffened slightly. He hadn’t realised that, as the pace of the song had grown, so had the pitch, and so had the intensity of his thoughts. Ignoring his brother, he continued, pulling the bow across the strings in a manner which could almost be described as  _vicious._

“Your dinner is downstairs, if you want it,” he said after a moment. He took his towel from his bedpost and pyjamas from his draw and left the room.

Sherlock could hear him arguing with their  _carer,_ telling him that he could bathe himself without drowning, thank you very much. He wondered just why their parents had appointed the man, who was obviously an idiot, to look after them. Then he wondered where they were. Looking out the window, he couldn’t see their car in the driveway. They must have left while the two boys were in time out. He wondered how long it would be before they came back, then he realised it didn’t matter. Neither could mend something which had never been whole.

That night, as Sherlock Holmes, aged four, stood at his bedroom window and watched as cold sheets of rain blanketed the countryside, he swore to himself, in the lull between one brush of his bow on the A string and another, that he would never again risk the confusion and hurt which came from those two tiny words.

 

When Sherlock came back from his own shower, Mycroft had closed his book and was settling down for sleep. The younger brother allowed himself to be directed into his bed by the man whose name he had yet to bother to ask. Either that, or it was simply so boring he’d already deleted it from his memory. The light was turned off and the door was closed.

Sherlock concentrated on the small, cold drop of water making its way down the back of his neck. It was uncomfortable, but he made no move to wipe it away. “You were right, you know,” he murmured into the darkness.

“I’m right about everything. What time are you talking about?” a muffled answer drifted from across the limitless void of three metres which separated them.

Sherlock closed his eyes against the darkness and took a deep, quiet breath. “I wasn’t really sorry.” Why did it hurt so much to say it? Because it was a lie? He’d lied before. What was so different?

Mycroft was silent for a long time and Sherlock wondered if he’d fallen asleep. He’d just tucked his hand under his pillow and closed his eyes, focusing on his hunger rather than the pain in his chest which made him feel like crying when Mycroft said, “I know.”

He held his breath and only let it go when he was certain it wouldn’t come out as a sob. He repeated this motion a number of times until he could relax enough to fall asleep. He was Sherlock Holmes, after all. Sherlock Holmes didn’t cry over something as silly as a broken heart.


End file.
